Happy Slam Reflections: Day 10

Upset of the day: [29] Sloane Stephens def. [3] Serena Williams 3-6, 7-5, 6-4. After her win, she went straight to her chair for her smartphone (oh, kids) and told Pam Shriver she had 145 messages (impressive). On court after, she charmed the crowd, saying “I’m sure my grandparents are freaking out. They’re watching probably on their computer.” Cute.

Quote of the day: “This morning when I got up, I was like, Look, dude, like, you can do this. Like, go out and play and do your best.” – Sloane Stephens.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie of the day: Ashleigh Barty and Casey Dellacqua def. Varvara Lepchenko and Saisai Zheng 6-2, 6-4 to become the first all-Aussie team through to the women’s doubles final since Fromholtz/Gourlay in 1977.

The moment we all held our breaths: Serena Williams called the trainer toward the end of the 2nd set in her match. It was later revealed she was having back spasms. In her post-match press conference, Serena said “Well, I was running to the net for a dropshot. As I went to hit it, it was on the backhand. I even screamed on the court. I was like, Ahh. I totally locked up after that.”

Not an early bird: After a comment that she’d played a lot of morning matches, Victoria Azarenka said “I’m not a morning person, but when I don’t have a choice, I don’t have a choice. I have to play. If it would be my choice, I wouldn’t be waking up before 11:00 (laughter).”

Dr. Tsonga: On why the Women’s side hasn’t seen the top 4 seeds in the semifinals in a while, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga said “You know, the girls, they are more unstable emotionally than us. I’m sure everybody will say it’s true, even the girls (laughter). No? No, you don’t think? But, I mean, it’s just about hormones and all this stuff. We don’t have all these bad things, so we are physically in a good shape every time, and you are not. That’s it.”

On the rise: Sloane Stephens said before her win over Serena she had 17,000 Twitter followers. At her press conference, she had 35,000. (Now she has 42,000… and still growing).